On 16 January 1668, Samuel Pepy’s would write of a duel ‘. . . when the Duke of Buckingham . . . is a fellow of no more sobriety than to fight about a whore’. The incident recorded a duel between George Duke of Buckingham who had taken a mistress Anna Brudenell Countess of Shrewsbury and her husband Francis Talbot 11th Earl of Shrewsbury. Talbot was mortally wounded, dying two months later.
On 16 January 1661 King Charles II appointed Henry Bishop as the country’s first Postmaster General he introduced postmarks usually on the back of the letter used in the Chief Office in London
In 1840 butler Francis Courvoisier was hanged for cutting his master’s throat later P.G. Wodehouse wrote about Jeeves next door in Dunraven Street
Ely Place a little cul-de-sac by Holborn Circus is not part of London but an enclave of Cambridgeshire for the Bishops of Ely
In 14th century London employed Rakers to rake the excrement out of toilets, notably one Richard the Raker died by drowning in his own toilet
During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Holland Queen Wilhelmina moved her Dutch government into her London home at 77 Chester Square, Belgravia
Dr Fu Manchu, Chinese master criminal created by writer Sax Rohmer was as a result of his encounter with a Chinese man in foggy Limehouse
The world’s first magazine, The Gentleman’s Magazine, began publication with the January 1731 issue and was printed at St John’s Gate, in Clerkenwell
Millwall is the only football club in the top 4 divisions whose name, when written in capitals, requires no curved lines
In the 1800s the slang for a cabbie was Jervey a dubious derivation in the OED is: jarvey ‘from a coachman named Jarvis who was hanged’
In 1953 Fashion designer Laura Ashley started her business in her flat at 83 Cambridge Street, Pimlico where she hand printed fabrics
There are over 23,500 jewels at the Tower of London. The total value of the jewels is estimated to exceed £20 billion
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
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